December Daily – Day 1: Advent

I know that the idea behind Advent is a religious one, but since I am not particularly religious, I’m going to stick with the Advent that is secular in nature.  I found a lot of neat ideas for different advent calendars this year, but I think that we’re going to save those for next year, when little man is just a bit older.  This year, we’re going to do the December Daily/Journal Your Christmas/Countdown to Christmas thing only.  LOL. 
Now it is the first and we’re kicking off December with a spirit of happiness, peace, celebration and magic.  I love the idea of rekindling the magic of the season.  It has been a long year full of ups and downs, frustrations and huge emotional highs.  Now it is time to focus on the magic. 

Jessica bought me an advent calendar at the store.  I am using that for my first picture/page.  We got a big laugh out of it because the chocolate inside is so totally horrible.  It is the size in diameter of a nickel probably, but I couldn’t even eat it.  I think that Dove needs to get into the advent calendar business.  :)

We’ve started planning out our activities and things for December.  It is going to be a month chock full o’ things, and I have to get ready for England (leaving january 7th), so time is of the essence and I want to wring every juicy moment out of December. 

It is especially important this year because it is little man’s first Christmas.  It is so exciting.  I know he isn’t going to understand it all, but it is special anyway, and I want us to have some family traditions that he can grow up with.  Today, Jessica and I looked through one of my first scrapbooks.  It was crazy and made us laugh about the old school page layouts and stickers used.  How ugly things were!  Good ol’ Creative Memories and Mrs. Grosmann’s stickers.  LOL.  Even though it was ugly and embarrassing to see how stupid it looked to me now, it was still fun to reminisce and have those memories.  I want to be sure to capture those moving forward.  I’m not getting any younger.  LOL. 

It makes me sad that my grandma has no scrapbooks or photo albums or anything really from her life.  She has a few photos that she still has (I could choke her for giving away a bunch of them before), and I’ve laid claim to them before she tries to throw them out too.  I want our family to have some history and tradition and if that starts now, then so be it!  We have some minor traditions, but I want to have them be recorded and passed down even if they are no longer being practiced. 

But now... let the countdown begin!

We’ll see…